Telepresence is a videoconference system for implementing a virtual conference environment. The virtual conference environment aims to: reflect the personalization factors of the attendees sufficiently, simulate the real experience of the attendees as far as possible, improve the acceptability to the end users immensely, and improve the equipment use ratio, return on investment and user satisfaction. Compared with a traditional videoconference system, an ideal Telepresence system brings more merits: images that simulate the size of a real person; smooth motion; precise gestures; video, lighting, and audio of a studio level; eye contact and communication like eye contact among a large user group; immersive conference environment, which makes the attendees feel as if they are on the same conference site; consistency of difference conference sites; and hidden cameras, which reduce impact on the users.
In the process of implementing the present application, the inventor finds that the existing telepresence system is defective in poor panoramic presence effect. The existing telepresence system generally uses multiple cameras and multiple large-screen monitors for collecting and displaying images. Each camera or monitor collects or displays one or more persons on the local or remote site. In the existing telepresence system, multiple cameras are used for photographing, and disparity exists between the images photographed by different cameras. It is impossible to splice multiple images into panorama by laying out the cameras. It is necessary to use the monitor rim to cover up the defects of the images at the perspective joint of the cameras. Therefore, the existing telepresence system is unable to give pleasant panoramic experience to the attendees. When the attendees are moving in the area near the monitor rim, the image effect is even unacceptable.
Moreover, the existing telepresence need to improve the following aspects:
1. Depth Presence
Most telepresence system still presents two-dimensional (2D) images. That is, the users see planar images only, and are unable to perceive the depth information of the conference scene of the opposite party.
2. Seamless Display
The existing telepresence system generally uses multiple large-sized flat televisions, either Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) or Plasma Display Panel (PDP), to present images in a combined way. In the adjacent display area between two flat televisions, part of the images presented in such a way is obstructed by the television rim, thus making it impossible to give panoramic seamless experience to the attendees.
3. Eye Contact/Gaze Perception
Eye-to-eye contact is an important non-lingual communication mode. Eye contact causes heart beats and blood pressure change physiologically, and improves the activity of the brain. Gaze perception provides many communication foundations such as feedback, dialog mode, and emotion expression, and is a key means of perceiving the thoughts of the opposite party. The traditional videoconference system and the existing telepresence system are unable to enable eye contact between users due to disparity: Instinctively, the user looks at the opposite party on the screen rather than the camera, but the camera is usually not located at the center of the screen. Consequently, disparity exists between the picture photographed by the camera and the picture faced by the user, and good eye contact is impossible.